Led by Star Wars #1, the Top Thousand Comics
accounted for around 58.59 million copies; Diamond reported it sold 98
million copies altogether, so that's nearly three-fifths of all copies.
The figure is up from 52.07 million copies in 2014 and represents a big
rebound. The totals from the past six years:

In full retail
dollars, the Top Thousand Comics sold for $239.05 million, a huge increase over 2014's $201.03 million. (See the 2014
article here and charts here.)

Every
single comic book in the Top 100 had "multiple order codes" at Diamond,
meaning there were variant covers or reprints combined into one entry;
one did not, but we believe that to be an error.

Noticing
the trend, yet? The top-selling books were accounting for fewer copies
sold in recent years than they had been, with books further down the
charts accounting for more. But in 2015, that changed — and if you
compare this year's titles with last year's titles, from 1st to 1,000th
place, you see it in action.

In the first graphic above
(click to enlarge) the Top 10 titles for the year are off the charts at
the top, mostly above 250,000 copies. But then the titles through about
300th place had sales considerably higher in 2015 than in 2014.

Running
the same kind of analysis shows us how much the quantities have
increased in the last five years. The second graphic, below, compares
Top 1000 comic sales by rank in 2010, the bottom of the last comics
recesssion, with sales in 2015. Issues at every single ranking in 2015
outsold equivalently ranked comics in 2010.

Depicting the same information another way, we find the following breakdowns for unit sales:

NUMBER OF COMIC BOOK ISSUES SELLING AT LEAST THIS MANY COPIES DURING YEAR

200,000+

100,000+

75,000+

50,000+

25,000+

10,000+

2009

2

39

119

379

n.a.

n.a.

2010

0

26

94

303

955

n.a.

2011

3

42

86

343

984

n.a.

2012

5

63

129

403

1100

2250

2013

6

64

178

390

1128

2430

2014

4

40

108

401

1195

2353

2015

21

95

167

367

1166

2280

What this table answers is: where does the 100,000-copy level start on
the chart? In 2010, every book above 26th place sold that in the six figures; in 2015, six-figures went out to 95th place.

As
you can see, the upper tiers, above 75,000 copies, soared dramatically
from 2014 to 2015, reversing a dip from the previous year.

The
Top ThousandGraphic Novels, led by Saga Vol. 4, went for $81.46 million, just barely up from $81.19 million in 2014. For the last five years, that comes to...

2011: $58.4 million
2012: $71.4 million
2013: $79.03 million
2014: $81.19 million 2015: $81.46 million

Combined,
the Top
Thousand Comics and Top Thousand Graphic Novel lists account for about
55% of all the orders by dollars Diamond received for print products in
2015. That's again another increase, after several years where the
top-selling books were accounting for less of a growing pie.

Who published the Top Thousand Comics this year? Here's the breakdown:

Boom reappeared on the list and Oni was added, thanks to Invader Zim and Rick & Morty. IDW recovered from the drop-off in 2014, while DC lost 26 entries.

And here's the publisher breakdown of the Top Thousand Graphic Novels. Those with 10 or more entries:

DC: 341 (-52 from 2014)

Marvel: 287 (+36 from 2014)

Image: 166 (+51 from 2014)

Dark Horse: 60 (-28 from 2014)

IDW: 35 (-1 from 2014)

Viz: 18 (+1 from 2014)Boom: 14(-5 from 2014)

Dynamite:14 (+12 from 2014) Random House: 13 (-12 from 2014)

Last year Marvel lost a lot of entries and DC gained them; the reverse happened this year. Image's increase was huge.

Comichron.com curator John Jackson Miller
has tracked the comics industry for more than 20 years, including a
decade editing the industry's retail trade magazine; he is the author of
several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books
for various franchises.

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